


The Alchemist of Serkonos

by xpatxperience



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Low Chaos (Dishonored), POV Second Person, Post-Low Chaos Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 18:22:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9454490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpatxperience/pseuds/xpatxperience
Summary: A character study of Alexandria Hypatia after the events of Dishonored 2.





	

Everyone assumes you are the victim.

    When Emily claims her throne once again and banishes Delilah into that cursed painting of hers, no one questions your allegiance to the new Duke and the old empress.

   After all, it wasn't you who refused the people on the rocky shores of Addermire. Those were the Duke's men. It wasn't you who locked yourself away and stop helping the workers. That was the Duke. It wasn’t you who sent out mechanical soldiers to slaughter the people like sheep. That was the Duke’s Inventor. They are all too glad to forget that you were the Duke’s alchemist. As long as your hands continue to work for the good of the people then why should anyone think different?

    How could they know that the hands that once so steadily calmed a child in order to administer a life-saving vaccine were the same hands that could rip intestines from unmarked bodies with the flick of a wrist? That the same person who helped heal and an entire island could rake destruction over the untouched skin, scaring people for what little life they had left. Then in one last glorious motion, you ripped their life from their body and fed on it like imported honey.

    When you return to Addermire after Emily has twice won her thrown, you look up at the sprawling wasteland that has become your work, then your prison, and finally your home. But a moment is all you take because there are infections to treat and you must make up for lost time.

    Resources are no problem for you.  They never were under the Duke, the real Duke, but you could never quite shake the feeling everything from him with somebody else's. Like it was bought with blood money from blood fly victims purposefully left uncured.

   So now a steady stream of new faces flows in, patients and nurses alike, alongside new lab equipment and research from Tivia and Morley. You are given Kirin Jindosh’s ‘research’ to use as you like. His incomprehensive notes scrawl across page after page, tying together notebook after notebook.  There are detailed accounts of exposing people to disease then keeping them just barely alive to see how it accumulates.  What makes you the sickest is the ‘fascinating’ you find written in the margins. You think back to the quiet boy you met at the Academy.  The guilt of how he turned out doesn't eat you away as much as you think. After all, you have little room for judgement these days and his actions are his own.  You keep what's useful and burn the rest of it out on the terrace. It's somewhat of an event.

    The halls are always filled with noise now. A steady babble of words you just can't make out, permanently reminding you of the hundreds of thousands that share Karnaca with you. From the miners in the Dust District coughing up a cure - to the children being born who will never know how much a blood fly bite hurts.

   You think the quiet is what bothered you the most.

   In the quiet moments in your lab, memories punch their way into the forefront of your thoughts reminding you just how slick blood felt running between your fingers. Unwanted memories of how liver felt being swallowed and the soft taste of flesh against your teeth. Then they are gone. Just as quick as they came, and no one could tell the difference. You care not for remembering these things so you put them away into a corner so deep in your mind not even the Outsider could reach it.

   You scrub your conscious clean with eighteen-hour workdays and by curing a plague in less than a year. You refuse an award for it.

 

    Time slips through your fingers. Not like it did when your body wasn’t your own, where the days seemed to disappear with no explanation. One day would come and be lost to the next without any memories of it ever happening. Now all the days stretch out into one, like a cat in the Serkonian sun, never seeming to hold their own.  They blur together for strength and you can never seem to grasp the firm enough to get. anything. done. fast. enough.

   This, you suppose, is a good punishment.

   You think about the life you could have had sometimes. Of course, only in the dark hours of the night when your mind and conscience finally allow for rest. As you lay in your bed made for two, you can't help ponder the toxic  “what-if’s” of life. Your train of thought is often held hostage by your own pragmatic thoughts, whisking away ideas of none of this ever happening by reminding you of the Duke’s horrendous spending or of the “interesting’s” found in Jindosh’s notebook.

   No. This is the way it had to end.

     Yet your thoughts are your own again so you treat yourself to a fantasy world. Your mind wanders to the day you and Vasco took the leap of faith, injecting yourselves with a monstrous serum desperate to find a cure. Your thoughts linger on his face as you both systematically and methodically injected it into your veins. His expression was one that couldn't hide nervousness, even under the small pleasant smile that fell from his lips. You would never see that smile after that night. When you awoke in the morning you would only see concern adorn his face -- concern and pity, though you chose to ignore the latter. In your mind, you reach out and touch his cheek assuring him your body is your own because it is. In your fantasy, the Crown Killer is nothing more than a one night stand and you live out your days by Vasco’s side instead of the other way around.

  But even the alchemist of Karnaca can’t patch all wounds so you are forced to live with the memories of ripping out hearts instead of telling a man you loved him.

  
This you think, is your biggest regret.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this after my chem final and when my teacher asked what is was i died a little.


End file.
